Was the Club World Cup really worth $1bn to DAZN – and what happens now?

New York Times

4 days ago

The morning after the night before, DAZN rolled out the big numbers in the search for Club World Cup vindication on Monday.
Alongside the 'heartfelt thanks' to U.S. President Donald Trump included in a company LinkedIn post to add the full stop to a month of coverage, there was the bold claim from DAZN chief executive Shay Segev that the competition had seen 'over three billion viewers' tune in to their free content.
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That was three viewers for every dollar spent on becoming the tournament's global broadcast partner back last December and repeated the triumphant forecasts of FIFA president Gianni Infantino at the weekend. His slightly more reserved expectation was that between 'two and three billion' had been swept along ahead of the final.
DAZN and FIFA have not been willing to show the working behind their optimistic sums but, by their reckoning, a 63-game run that ended with Chelsea's 3-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain on Sunday achieved viewing figures that equate to roughly a third of the world's population. Little wonder, then, that Infantino declared his gift to football's ecosystem a 'huge, huge, huge success'.
The unverified and questionable figures pushed by FIFA and its broadcast partner are in keeping with a competition driven by self-promotion. They serve a purpose, projecting the Club World Cup as an event that only the foolhardy missed, but drifted some way from reality.
Viewing numbers were good, above some pre-tournament estimates, but far from spectacular.
DAZN, now backed in part by Saudi Arabia's wealth, have so far offered no audience insight beyond the three billion claim but sub-licence holders in Europe and North America have delivered mixed verdicts to this point. The World Cup or even the Champions League it was not: this tournament caused ripples but not a splash.
Advocates of the Club World Cup would find no shame in that, accepting this is just the start of a journey that has seen FIFA park tanks on UEFA's lawn. But for those, like Infantino, who suggest this marks the start of a 'golden era of club football', TV audiences were not fully convinced.
Big sporting events do not make a habit of talking themselves down.
FIFA said two years ago that the Qatar World Cup brought an engagement of five billion people, a number that included an 'array of platforms and devices across the media universe'. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), by chance, came to the same figure when counting up a global audience for the Paris Olympics last year.
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They are figures typically taken with a tablespoon of salt and FIFA's latest count, this time for the Club World Cup, will inevitably be viewed through the same sceptical lens.
'These figures sound like a very rough estimate of reach, the number of people who watched at least a game for a couple of minutes,' says Francois Godard, senior media analyst at the London-based Enders Analysis.
'But the billion width of (Infantino's) estimate makes it difficult to take seriously. Anyway, the commercial value of the Club World Cup resides in the professionally and independently measured viewership in the richest markets, starting with the U.S., where advertising airtime is sold at the highest global prices.
'Everybody is equal, but to advertisers, one average U.S. viewer is worth a multiple of an average Latin American viewer.'
The U.S., which played host to the Club World Cup, feels a pertinent place to start. On the back of underwhelming crowds at some stadiums and 12 months out from FIFA's World Cup coming to the U.S., Canada and Mexico, there were strong figures reported by the two sub-licence holders, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) and TelevisaUnivision, who aired 18 games across their Spanish-speaking networks.
The first data from Nielsen, which specialises in audience insight, suggested the two platforms brought in a combined 2.45m for the final alone. Also of note was the fact that almost half of the Club World Cup audiences on WBD channels came from the 18-49 demographic, a group targeted for long-term growth.
'Speaking specifically to the U.S. broadcasts on WBD and the TelevisaUnivision networks, the FIFA Club World Cup numbers were strong,' says William Mao, senior vice president of Octagon's global media rights consulting.
'The final drew 2.45million viewers across TBS and Univision broadcasts, putting the total audience in range of the average viewership for the NHL Stanley Cup Finals on TNT / TruTV this past season.
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'To put the performance of the FIFA Club World Cup as a U.S. TV product into further context, the 494,000 average viewers across matches on WBD networks (TNT, TBS, TruTV) is higher than that of much-talked-about Roland-Garros broadcasts on TNT last month (399,000), greater than the 2024-25 NHL regular season average audience on TNT / TruTV (317,000), and also more than Major League Baseball's average on TBS in 2024 (353,000).
'Obviously, the FIFA Club World Cup had fewer overall matches and TV broadcasts than these other sports properties, but the average is still solid. For TNT and TelevisaUnivision, their sub-licenses were a worthwhile play given the resulting audiences.'
Viewers on the WBD platforms were typically drawn to the big European sides and, until the final, it was Real Madrid's quarter-final win over Borussia Dortmund that drew the biggest audience, peaking at 1.3million. Two of their top six broadcasts also included Lionel Messi's Inter Miami before the final drew in 1.3m, with a peak of 1.8m on TBS. Matches airing on weekends and nights across the tournament, 15 in total, averaged 535,000.
TelevisaUnivision, meanwhile, was encouraged by its own figures. It had 856,000 watch the opening game between Al Ahly and Inter Miami before 1.43m watched Sunday's final. Its press release last night called that the highest-rated Spanish-language daytime telecast of the year to date. It added that the tournament coverage reached 9.2m total viewers across all TelevisaUnivision networks in the U.S.
None of this, of course, includes the numbers of DAZN, which is not obligated to publish its viewing figures or sign-up numbers as a streaming platform and does not have its audiences measured in the same way as traditional broadcasters.
A post-tournament report in the coming days is likely to shed greater light on the performance of FIFA's global broadcast partner for the maiden 32-team event, with numbers expected to have been most encouraging in South America after Palmeiras, Botafogo, Flamengo and Fluminense (eventual semi-finalists) advanced to the knockout stages.
DAZN has always focused on this being a global event and the hope of Pete Oliver, chief executive of growth markets, to hit over 100million direct viewers on its platform is likely to have been realised. A figure closer to 150million is thought to have been hit.
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FIFA, however, would be hard-pressed to conclude the Club World Cup had left a deep mark on the UK. Although DAZN will inevitably have driven audiences to its app, Channel 5, the UK's terrestrial broadcast partner, reported modest figures in a country that produced the eventual winners.
Paris Saint-Germain's drubbing of Real Madrid in last Wednesday's semi-final drew an average audience of 657,000, which was broadly half (1.2million) of the Women's Euro 2025 clash between Wales and France on fellow terrestrial station ITV1, according to data from Overnights for Broadcast website. They also reported that coverage by the BBC, a public service broadcaster, of England against the Netherlands in the Euros averaged 2.3million in the less attractive late afternoon slot.
Channel 5 said its biggest audience ahead of the final had been Chelsea's opening game against Los Angeles FC, when a peak of 1.4million viewers in the UK watched a fixture that kicked off at 8pm on a Sunday night. In a press release, it added that adults aged 16-34 had accounted for 34 per cent of the audience that had averaged 922,000. In contrast, the Nations League final between Portugal and Spain eight days earlier was watched by 2.6million in the UK.
Sunday's final would eventually deliver a new high audience for Channel 5, an average of 1.1million across the five-hour broadcast. That represented a nine per cent market share, less than half the number that watched England play Wales in the Euros. That audience averaged at 2.9million, though the Club World Cup final numbers did not include DAZN's UK viewership.
That underwhelming landscape, though, has not been replicated in other parts of Europe, where figures in other key territories are said to have exceeded some expectations.
France, in particular, received the competition well — buoyed, no doubt, by the progress of an exciting PSG side which dominates the national marketplace in terms of support. With a selection of games broadcast on TF1, as well as DAZN, 3.8m watched PSG's victory over Atletico Madrid and then, according to Mediametrie, another 4.79million tuned in for the final against Chelsea.
The direct comparison on the night was France's 5-2 win over the Netherlands at the women's Euros, which had 2.28million, but the Club World Cup final took a 30 per cent market share.
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Its popularity was notable in Spain, too. Coverage of Sunday's final on Telecinco, a free-to-air established channel, averaged just under three million, according to figures from Barlovento Comunicacion. The same data group found that 4.1million had watched PSG trample all over Madrid four days earlier.
Germany and Italy, who each had two competing clubs in the U.S., also reported far better ratings than in the UK.
'The early indications are relatively positive,' says Godard. 'We're looking at good ratings of Club World Cup games on broadcasters like Mediaset in Spain and Italy and Sat.1 in Germany.
'This is summer, there is no alternative football programming, and entertainment content is typically reheated. So the Club World Cup was a fresh piece of content in a slightly dry environment.'
So, was the Club World Cup worth $1bn to DAZN?
The streamer's unequivocal (and perhaps inevitable) answer is affirmative. It can point to record sign-ups to its app, with a hugely inflated customer base now at its disposal in a wide range of global territories.
Social media exposure also exploded. According to data from Social Blade, a website used to track activity on multiple platforms, DAZN added one million subscribers to its YouTube channel, a rise of over 50 per cent. That helped deliver 253million views of its YouTube videos across 30 days. Extended highlights of Sunday's final alone had clocked up 17million views.
There was little that was revolutionary about DAZN's coverage, although the advent of the camera stationed on the referee's chest undeniably offered the armchair viewers another intriguing perspective on play. There is already an expectation that similar angles will be made available to Premier League viewers, subject to approval from IFAB, the sport's lawmakers.
Ref cam's of Neto's goal is AMAZING 🤯
Watch the @FIFACWC | June 14 – July 13 | Every game. Free. | https://t.co/i0K4eUu4lJ | #FIFACWC #TakeItToTheWorld #CHELAF pic.twitter.com/rvyja1JcQ2
— DAZN Football (@DAZNFootball) June 16, 2025
Besides, according to DAZN, this was as much about playing the long game. Although it is unlikely to see a short-term lift in its subscriber numbers, it has left a footprint on a landscape it wishes to eventually conquer.
'It has worked for DAZN,' says Pierre Maes, an expert in the sale of sports rights in Europe. 'It's seen a lot of people downloading the app and creating an account, that's for sure. Worldwide for DAZN, it has been good.
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'DAZN is a good partner for FIFA because it has this global footprint. Also, it can act like an agency, as it did here, to find sub-licences and bring exposure to all countries in the world. That's a beautiful asset.'
The last month, though, is likely to have emboldened Infantino as plans begin for the next Club World Cup. To say those plans are at an embryonic stage would be something of an understatement: the date, location, entry criteria and number of participants are all yet to be determined.
Either way, FIFA's ambitions would suggest it will be intent on sourcing more than $1billion from a broadcast partner next time around, especially if the format is expanded to include more of Europe's elite.
DAZN might yet stick around for another dance, given the strong bonds that have been forged with FIFA in the last six months but will this new Club World Cup have convinced other broadcasters to chance their arm?
'I don't think so,' says Maes. 'It would be a huge surprise to me to see broadcasters pay a big amount for the next edition.
'Their resources are limited and they have to choose. And this is one more soccer competition. If they struggled to find a broadcaster for this edition, it's going to be as difficult, at least, for the next edition.
'For me, the Club World Cup is the illustration of football killing itself. We see more and more competitions invented to try to drive more revenues. By doing this, with an overabundance of events, football is killing itself.
'Look at the NFL in the States. Their main strategic priority and asset is scarcity. Every game is an event because there are not a lot of games. Football is doing exactly the opposite.'
Another football property has been added to the menu for broadcasters to select from, but it remains to be seen if FIFA's new offering, showcased and promoted across the US, has done enough to convince future audiences to bite.